A Walk on the Rewilded Side

Every year, Aberdeen turns a small number of its famously grey facades over to an ever changing roster of street artists to do with them what they will. They do this as part of Nuart, a festival the Granite City cohosts with Stravangar. Since 2017, a diverse array of paste-ups, murals and other installations have built up across the city, not just brightening the urban environment but bringing world class art out into the open for all to enjoy.

This June was no different, with another 13 internationally recognised artists contributing works in a wide range of styles, but where 2023 did distinguish itself was in its theme: rewilding. You might therefore be forgiven for expecting an animalistic bent to proceedings, with rewilding traditionally being used to describe the reintroduction of lost species such as eagles and beaver; and indeed hedgehogs, flamingos and goldfish join the existing leopards, seagulls and unicorns. But it turns out the brief is much bigger than that.

This being a street art festival, Nuart Aberdeen, alongside the artists with which it’s partnered, is much more interested in other forms of rewilding, especially in terms of human nature and expression. Another word, though less emotive, might be reclamation. After all, graffiti has become synonymous in the eyes of some with trespass, vandalism and antisocial behaviour, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that those who practice it might want to reclaim the word and have their say.

As such, in addition to natural vistas and exotic critters, political in their own way, the works this year are of a particularly antiestablishment persuasion. A naked judge frolics flippantly through The Green, evoking the protagonist of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are—a book ostensibly about monsters but which is actually concerned with the wildness of childhood. But this is just the start of it. The wild rumpus has only just begun.

Even the animals are complicit. Across the road from HMV, another icon of this year’s festival, Hacker Hedgehog, gets to work from his new home astride a concrete block—no doubt pirating movies between illicit hacks. Not far away, a pair of clueless looking ostriches carry a pair of equally clueless looking police officers. And the goldfish? Well, it’s tagged its plastic bag with an anarchic “A”—just around the corner from the police station, no less.

At the other end of Union Street, Aberdeen’s now partly pedestrianised high street, a window display goads: “Hello Mister Police Officer”. This is The Print Room, which throughout the festival held a small exhibition on street art in Tartu, on those breaking the law to make the city “more meaningful, fun and personal”, as well as prints for sale of Tartu native Edward con Longus‘ judge and hedgehog, among others. Outside, on the side of a bin, Oor Wullie beams with pride. In fact, you can imagine those words coming from any number of Beano characters, more closely associated with Dundee but intellectual property of a company with links to Aberdeen, too.

This year’s official trail was signposted by rabbits, in what was inevitably a reference to Alice in Wonderland, and perhaps The Matrix. Visitors follow the white rabbit not down a rabbit hole but into parts of the city they might never have thought to explore, or perhaps presumed they never had access. Along the way you might notice a series of tree prints, hidden in doorways and on inaccessible walls. These are just thatches, however, the full forest of Stanley Donwood‘s paste-ups covering the boarded-up windows of the abandoned hospital at Woolmanhill. Enter at your own risk.

Most of all, though, Nuart seeks to rewild art. Aberdeen Art Gallery and Aberdeen University may have made much available online during the Covid-19 pandemic but for the most part still keep the artworks in their respective collections behind closed doors. Nuart, however, places art firmly in the public domain—inspiring, confronting, awakening—whether locals want it there or not. At first it kept to the fringes, artworks tucked away in car parks and down alleyways, but each year it grows bolder. Indeed, this year children were handed crayons, welcomed into Marishall College and invited to draw on the floor of its quadrangle.

Of course, there’s a limit to how transgressive a festival can be when it’s run in conjunction with the city council, but while the visiting artists may be commissioned and the primarily artworks curated, there is a treasure trove of smaller tags by local artists that remain outwith the official map and marketing materials. These, together with the many surviving installations from previous years, make for quite the treasure trove, and indeed treasure hunt. There are still pieces from past years, let alone this year, that I’ve yet to find—even in areas I think I know well.

And although rewilding might be this year’s theme, it’s one that can be seen retrospectively in previous years’ work—whether it’s Isaac Cordal‘s little grey men escaping invisible offices on Guestrow, not unlike Keane Reeves’ Mr Anderson before he became Neo; Strøk‘s figures free-running on Rosemount Viaduct, veritable Lost Boys defying gravity forevermore; or simply Elisa Capdevila’s hand reaching for a curtained window and the natural light beyond, from a year when “reconnect” was the name of the game. In fact, it’s hard to think of any street art that doesn’t in some way remind us of the irrepressible animal within—ready to escape, play, live.

But while rewilding might perhaps fittingly be a hard word to claim, for me it still comes back to nature. I love viewing street art for the same reason I love encountering urban wildlife—and it’s likely why my favourite piece from any iteration of Nuart remains Hama Woods’ leopard on Crooked Lane. It speaks to something primal and true. As with Alice or Neo or Max, it transports us somewhere unpredictable, irrational, extraordinary. Nuart may be over for another year but its mark has been made and it will one day return. Meanwhile, The Big Hop Trail—hares rather than rabbits this time—may be substantially less subversive but still promises to take visitors on a journey down the rabbit hole, to where the wild things are, in and around Aberdeen.